


The Pink Sock

by tangulo



Category: Angst - Fandom, Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, Child Death, Mental Breakdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 13:31:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4437257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangulo/pseuds/tangulo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One pink sock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pink Sock

One pink sock. 

Jonny frowned. He ducked his head and squinted into the dryer. Why was it always the baby’s socks that disappeared? Blowing out a frustrated breath, he dropped the one pink sock into the basket of folded laundry and hoisted it under his arm.

 

He paused in the kitchen and put away the dish towels. His next stop, the linen closet, was only a few steps farther along the hallway. With practiced efficiency, towels and sheets found their way to the proper shelves. The baby’s soft cotton washcloths followed. The basket was now half empty. Jonny scooped it up under his arm and continued down the hall. As he turned into the master bedroom, he paused and cocked his head, certain he had heard the baby. 

When the cry wasn’t repeated, he shrugged and nudged the door open. He wasted no time in separating his and Pat’s clothes from the basket. Finishing the laundry before naptime ended was a priority. He still didn’t manage things well when the baby was awake. He allowed himself a tiny chuckle at his present condition. Jonathan Toews. Hockey God. Stanley Cup Champion. Captain Serious. Content Domestic.

 

The phone rang, taking him out of his brief reverie, and Patrick snatched it before it woke the baby. Pat’s laughter drifted over the line. “Sitting by the phone?” 

“No, Pat. I’m putting laundry away.” 

It’s a testament to how much Jonny knows Patrick by now, he thinks to himself, as he sensed the frown Pat must have been wearing on his face on his end of the line. “No wonder you’re in a bad mood,” he joked. “You hate doing laundry.” 

Jonny sighed and sank onto the bed. He plucked at the one pink sock sticking through the plastic laundry basket. “Laundry doesn’t put me in a bad mood. It’s that I always seem to misplace something.” 

Patrick chuckled. “Lose another one of my socks?” 

“No, the baby’s. One of her pink ones.” 

Jonny waited for Patrick to make one of his usual comments about his compulsiveness. Instead, silence echoed back over the line. 

“Pat?” 

“I’m here. Listen….” He sighed. “I’ve got a meeting tonight with the Bauer people. That’s why I called. I’m going to be late.” 

“Should we eat without you, then?” 

Pat sighed again. “Yes.” 

“All right. But if you’re going to be very late, would you please call?” Jonny bit his lip as soon as the words left his mouth. It shamed him to ask, but he was still so tired. Having a newborn baby at home was more exhausting than he had imagined. Knowing Pat was home, able to take over if he wanted a rest, eased his mind. 

“I will.” Pat hung up. 

Jonny was puzzled over the abrupt goodbye before replacing the receiver. “Love you, too,” he mumbled. 

He wandered into the nursery, prepared to check on the baby, but stopped short in the doorway. His mouth fell open in shock. Hanging over the crib was a mobile. One of the old-fashioned ones, all painted wood and string. Jonny’s mouth thinned. He stalked the five steps across the nursery to the crib. Fuming mad, he unclamped the mobile from the rail and backed out of the room, holding it at arm’s length. 

He called Pat. “What the fuck, Pat? How could you?” he wailed. 

“Whoa. What’s wrong, Jon? What are you talking about?” 

“The mobile! How could you hang it up? We talked about this. If it were to fall into the crib, she could be strangled.” 

“Jonny,” Pat said. Jonny’s anger grew at the ringing condescension in his tone. “Babe,” he continued, “you picked out that mobile.” 

Jonny gasped. “Shut the fuck up, fucknut! I would never put her in danger like that.” Tears literally began to fill his eyes now.

 

Jonny doesn’t remember being this livid at Pat before. “Why are you doing this?” 

“What?”, Pat asked. Exasperation, and pity – pity? – emanating in his tone.

He sniffed. Pat sounded tired, though Jonny had no idea why. It’s not as though he had been up with a colicky infant the night before. Jonny licked his lips and placed a shaky hand on his temple. Or had it been the night before last? His memories tend to get hazy when he’s sleep deprived. The concussions didn’t help things on that end.

“You’re confusing me,” he accused. He hung up and, breathless, stared at the phone, daring it to ring. It didn’t. 

“Love you, too,” he whispered. 

Dinner was a quiet affair. Jonny tossed a salad and poured a glass of wine, a rare indulgence. Rare enough that he had to push the baby bottles out of the way in order to find a glass. When the phone rang at nine o’clock, he fumbled for it. 

“Hello?” he said, determined to sound calm. 

“Hello, mon fils,” his mother answered. 

Jonny relaxed and allowed some of his agitation to leak into his voice. His mother understood what he was going through. “I thought you might be Pat,” he confessed. “He’s late.” 

“Well, it’s just your old mom.” Jonny chuckled and his mother joined in. “How are you holding up?” 

Jonny’s laughter dried up. “Did Pat ask you to call?” 

“Now, Jonathan, he’s just worried about you.” 

Jonny jumped up so quickly, his leg bumped the table. The glass of wine teetered. Suddenly fascinated, he watched it wobble, spilling several drops of blood-red Cabernet onto the white mat. “I’m fine. Fine. Why can’t anyone see that? Just fine,” he repeated when his mother didn’t reply. 

“Did something happen today?” Maman asked after a moment. “Something that upset you?” 

Jonny groaned. His frustration peaked. “Yes!” he cried. “Something horrible happened. It was terrible. I’m still reeling.” He bit off a bark of laughter and reached for the wine bottle. He slopped more into his glass, ignoring how it splattered. “I lost a sock, maman.” 

“You lost – a sock?” 

Jonny burst out laughing. “Yes.” He raised the wine glass to his lips and swallowed a large mouthful. “A pink sock,” he clarified when he could speak again. 

“I didn’t know you owned any pink socks.” 

“It was the baby’s.” 

In an eerie repeat of the afternoon, silence descended over the line. Jonny didn’t like it. He felt compelled to fill it. “And Pat! Pat – you know what Patrick did, maman? - he hung a mobile over the crib! One with…strings. Do you have any idea what could happen – potentially – if it fell? All that splintery wood and all that string?” 

“Mon cheri-” 

“She could get strangled. She could die.” 

“Jon-” his mother sobbed. 

Exasperated, Jonny hung up. He took another sip of wine and studied the phone as he waited. His mother didn’t call back. 

Near midnight, he called Pat. Afraid that if he accepted the comfortable oblivion of their king-sized bed he wouldn’t wake if the baby cried, he settled for the couch. It was lumpy and the living room was drafty, but he stayed. 

Pat answered on the first ring. Even exhausted and distraught, Jonny could tell he had been asleep. “Where are you?” he asked. 

“At the UC. In my office. On the couch.” 

“Why?” He reached up to brush away a stray tear and saw the pink sock clutched in her hand. He wondered which one it was – the lost one or the found one. 

“How are you feeling?” Pat asked. 

“Lonely.” 

“Are you – better?” 

“I don’t know,” he said with a bitter laugh. “Am I?” 

Pat became silent. Jonny could feel the hesitation from the other end when Pat asked his question. “Where’s the baby?” 

Jonny panicked for a moment before he remembered. “In her crib.” 

Pat sighed. “Oh, Jonny-”

“What?” Jonny cried. “What? Just fucking say it, Pat. Tell me, why are you at your office at midnight. Why aren’t you home with us?” 

“There is no us, Jon!” Patrick thundered. 

Jonny caught his breath. “What are you saying? How the fuck can you say such a thing?” He rolled the pink sock back and forth between his palms. He was suddenly disoriented. “What are you saying?” he mouthed into the phone. 

“There is no baby. I’m sorry, but there isn’t. Not anymore.” 

The beginning of something ominous and terrifying niggled at Jonny’s brain. The room shrunk and pressed in. “I’m scared,” he whispered. 

Pat didn’t hear him. “The baby died, Jon. Remember? I’m sorry. In – in the final weeks. The chord, Jonny. It wrapped around her neck. She suffocated. Please. Try. I know its hard. But please. Try to remember.” 

“Fuck you!” Jonny screamed. “You’re a fucking liar, Patrick!” Jonny hissed. He struggled free from the blanket and started across the room toward the hall. Toward the nursery. 

“I’m a liar? Then tell me, Jonathan. What’s our baby’s name?” 

Jonny stopped in the middle of the living room. The ominous something grew and crowded his tired heart. He started to cry. “I have a pink sock!” he screamed into the phone. 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I can’t come home.” Pat hung up. 

Jonny stood in the center of the living room, phone to his ear, long after the busy signal had stopped. “Love you too”, he whispered, dropping the phone on the floor. He stared down the hall toward the bedrooms. After what seemed forever, his eyes dropped to his hand and he spied the pink sock. 

He frowned. What good was one sock without the other? Perhaps he should check the dryer again. “Or,” he mused, “the washer.” But if he went down to the laundry room now, he may not hear the baby if she screamed. If she cried. 

Tomorrow would be soon enough. 

Alone, he returned to the lumpy couch and huddled under the blanket, clutching the pink sock to his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> Set at some future after both Jon and Pat are retired from playing.
> 
> This is a short story I wrote back in HS. I changed the main characters' names (originally Matt and Ari) to Jon and Pat.
> 
> Comments are welcomed, as this is my very first foray into posting an actual work.


End file.
